My old laptop for self hosting just croaked, and I’m thinking of buying a 2nd hand mini pc, but this time I want to do it proper. I want to optimize the electricity consumption and specs needed/ future upgreadability, considering how expensive everything is now.
My use case is just for self hosting files (infrequent access and reducing reliance to google drive), and occasional dev workload via ssh. I’m thinking of buying a used optiplex with at least i6 gen cpu (SFF or micro form factor), but I want to see if there are better options.
There was a link posted in this subreddit about power consumption comparison of different mini pcs (raspberry pi, n100, etc), and I regret not saving it.
If anyone could suggest me better options it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I would get a Intel 6-8 gen i5 and then if you can afford it I would get some SSDs for data storage.
Keep in mind hardware prices are astronomic right now so you are unlikely to get a good deal
An i7 doesn’t really use much more power for bursty usage, as it gets back to sleep states faster. Same issue with ssds vs HDDs, per GB, there’s not much difference in power consumption, only when you look at per drive does it matter.
That hasn’t been my experience especially with SSDs vs HDDS
SSDs have no moving parts so they will always use less power since there is no motor
Of course. But when you have a storage requirement and it can be met with fewer HDDs than SSDs, the difference becomes less and less.